9 September 2023 - Craster, another Castle & Dolphins!
Miles driven today = 0
Total Miles to date = 357
I spoke too soon last night about the showers being hot here at Coast & Castles. Lisa's was indeed boiling, whereas mine was freezing with no apparent happy medium, so I think we will probably go self sufficient for showers tomorrow morning rather than risk a repeat of this morning's frustrations. But that aside it has been an absolutely perfect day.
We got the bikes out of the garage and pedalled down to Boulmer where we picked up the coastal path heading north past Longhoughton and Sugar Sands Beaches. I wasn't sure where one ends and the other starts so this could be either, or indeed both.
Onwards we pedalled past the interesting looking cliff faces of Cullernose Point.
A sharp right turn took us downhill to the quaint harbourside village of Craster.
Dunstanburgh Castle is an English Heritage site so we could look around it for free with our new membership. It lies half way between Craster and the next village up the coast of Embleton. But it is completely inaccesible by road and it is a good 2.5 mile round trip to walk there from Craster. There are signs banning the riding of bikes so we were debating whether we could push our bikes or whether we should chain them up somewhere in the village, when an angel appeared from the house next to the gate and offered us the use of her back yard to store our bikes.
So off we tromped across the sheep and cattle cropped turf to Dunstanburgh.
The Castle was built between 1313 and 1322 by Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who was leader of a faction who were opposed to King Edward II.
It was described to us as something of a vanity statement, having been built by Thomas larger than, and also within site of, the nearby Royal Castle of Bamburgh. However Thomas was captured and executed before he ever took up full residence and the Castle passed into ownership of the Crown.
One of the spiral staircases within the Gatehouse has been restored so I clambered up to the top, from where you get this fantastic view looking back southward towards Craster.
It was gone midday and we were hot and hungry so we marched back into the village and picked up our bikes. Then we headed on to the Jolly Fisherman Inn. There were no tables available inside or out so we ordered ciders and plonked ourselves at the bar while we studied the menu.
Lucky break number two, the barmaid told us that they were just about to open up the balcony and that we could have our pick of the tables out there. So, as is customary when we are holidaying by the Sea, we ordered a seafood platter for two, which I have to say was fabulous with moules, whitebait, smoked salmon, rollmops, prawns, mackerel pate and crab meat served up with salad and crusty bread.
Just as we were polishing off the last morsels of our meal I noticed that a few people were taking an interest in something out at sea and we were treated to a pod of between 10 and 12 dolphins swimming past in two groups. They were just a litle way out beyond the rocks you can see in this photo. We did get a couple of photos of them on our phones but you would have to zoom right in to see just the speck of a dorsal fin so we just enjoyed the spectacle from our lofty perch.
Fully stuffed we jumped back on the bikes and retraced our outwards route. We stopped at a little cove which is marked on the map as Whitefin Spring, where a footbridge crosses the Howick Burn at the point it reaches the Sea. Unlike the other beaches, which were more easily accesible by car, there were very few people here and most of those who were there were braving the water. We really wished we had brought our swimming trunks with us but in all honesty who expects to be able to swim in the Sea in Northern England in September.
Before we got back on the bikes we went for a quick scramble and found what we could only assume is the aforementioned spring bubbling up from the rocks.
So then it was back to Boulmer. The beach here perhaps isn't quite as attractive as some of the others along this stretch of coastline but it still looked very tempting for an amble along the tideline.
We were nearly home so we thought we probably deserved another swift pub stop at the Fishing Boat Inn. I sampled a pint of the local Alnwick Gold which I would award a solid 7/10.
Again there were no tables available in the beer garden so we took the steps down to the beach and sat on the rocks to sup our beers and watch the swooping sand martins.
The weather today has been nothing short of stunning with no sign of the sea mist which intermittently bothered us yesterday. But quite bizarrely this rainbow suddenly appeared above the campsite just before sunset to give us the perfect end to what has been a truly fabulous day.
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